php - How to order by pivot table data in Laravel's Eloquent ORM

Question

In my Database, I have:

• tops Table
• posts Table
• tops_has_posts Table.

When I retrieve a top on my tops table I also retrieve the posts in relation with the top. But what if I want to retrieve these posts in a certain order ? So I add a range field in my pivot table tops_has_posts and I my trying to order by the result using Eloquent but it doesn't work.

I try this :

$top->articles()->whereHas('articles', function($q) {
    $q->orderBy('range', 'ASC');
})->get()->toArray();

And this :

$top->articles()->orderBy('range', 'ASC')->get()->toArray();

Both were desperate attempts.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

There are 2 ways - one with specifying the table.field, other using Eloquent alias pivot_field if you use withPivot('field'):

// if you use withPivot
public function articles()
{
  return $this->belongsToMany('Article', 'tops_has_posts')->withPivot('range');
}

// then: (with not whereHas)
$top = Top::with(['articles' => function ($q) {
  $q->orderBy('pivot_range', 'asc');
}])->first(); // or get() or whatever

This will work, because Eloquent aliases all fields provided in withPivot as pivot_field_name.

Now, generic solution:

$top = Top::with(['articles' => function ($q) {
  $q->orderBy('tops_has_posts.range', 'asc');
}])->first(); // or get() or whatever

// or:
$top = Top::first();
$articles = $top->articles()->orderBy('tops_has_posts.range', 'asc')->get();

This will order the related query.

Note: Don't make your life hard with naming things this way. posts are not necessarily articles, I would use either one or the other name, unless there is really need for this.